All Time Faves: Historical Suspense

As rural England slowly emerges from the sorrow of World War I, a particularly vicious attack on a household in a small Surrey village leaves five butchered bodies and no explanation for the killings. A Scotland Yard inspector investigates. …More

From the acclaimed author of "Mr. Timothy" and "The Pale Blue Eye" comes another historical thriller. This time, Bayard constructs a pitch-perfect novel featuring Eugene Francois Vidocq, a criminal who transforms himself into one of the world's greatest detectives. …More

Now back in print--this fast-paced, convincing "New York Times" bestselling thriller is set in New York City in 1896, where two men and a brave, determined woman embark on a quest that takes them into the tortured mind of a barbaric serial killer. …More

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel It is 1836. Europe is modernizing and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out. …More

A cryptic summons to a remote country house launches a London bookseller on an odyssey through 17th-century Europe. Given the task of restoring a magnificent library that has been pillaged during the English Civil War, Isaac Inchbold finds himself slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies, smugglers, ciphers, and forgeries. …More

When young Harry Collins finds the mutilated body of a black woman bound to a tree with barbed wire, he and his younger sister suspect the legendary Goat Man, who is said to lurk under the swinging bridge crossing Texas's Sabine River. The creature holds the key to a string of brutal murders--and a chilling truth. A "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year". …More

America, 1787. Ethan Saunders, once among General Washington's most valued spies, is living in disgrace after an accusation of treason cost him his reputation. But an opportunity for redemption comes calling when Saunders's old enemy, Alexander Hamilton, draws him into a struggle with bitter rival Thomas Jefferson over the creation of the Bank of the United States. . …More

The New York Times Bestseller Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes in Dante's Inferno. Only an elite group of America's first Dante scholars--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J. T. Fields--can solve the mystery. With the police baffled, more lives endangered, and Dante's literary future at stake, the Dante Club must shed its sheltered literary existence and find the killer. …More

"It is 1663, and England is wracked with intrigue and civil strife. When an Oxford don is murdered, it seems at first that the incident can have nothing to do with great matters of church and state. Who poured the arsenic into the victim's brandy? The evidence points to Sarah Blundy, a servant girl....She confesses to the crime and is sentenced to be hanged.

When her husband dies under suspicious circumstances, Lady Julia Grey investigates and discovers "disturbing truths about a husband she never truly knew and a world of deception, disease, and sexual obsession she could never have imagined" ("Publishers Weekly"). …More

In Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, Max Liebermann is at the forefront of psychoanalysis, practicing the controversial new science with all the skill of a master detective. Every dream, inflection, or slip of tongue in his "hysterical" patients has meaning and reveals some hidden truth. When a mysterious and beautiful medium dies under extraordinary circumstances, Max's good friend, Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, calls for his expert assistance. …More

Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, "The Good Thief" introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Tinti as an exciting new talent. …More